Splashtop has won the prestigious “Most Innovative Product” award from PC World, the “Best of What’s New” award from Popular Science and the ”Best of 2012 CES” award from LAPTOP Magazine. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California with many international offices.

Scribus is an Open Source program that brings professional page layout to Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp 4/eComStation and Windows desktops with a combination of press-ready output and new approaches to page design.Underneath a modern and user-friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as color separations, CMYK and Spot Color support, ICC color management, and versatile PDF creation. PostScript is also supported by plugin.

To begin with, we will compare word processing with publishing and how they are becoming more alike as new versions are created. This will be an interactive process, hopefully, with users in the room presenting their own experiences (eg. with MS word and MS Publisher).

There will also be a short demo (time permitting) of the Pica Mini Projector which might be used to project the entire presentation; or not, depending on the quality of the projection (only 50 lumens, hmmmm.

Sean Mather

XBMC is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. XBMC is available for Linux, OSX, and Windows.

While XBMC functions very well as a standard media player application for your computer, it has been designed to be the perfect companion for your HTPC. Supporting an almost endless range of remote controls, and combined with its beautiful interface and powerful skinning engine, XBMC feels very natural to use from the couch and is the ideal solution for your home theater.Currently XBMC can be used to play almost all popular audio and video formats around. It was designed for network playback, so you can stream your multimedia from anywhere in the house or directly from the internet using practically any protocol available. Use your media as-is: XBMC can play CDs and DVDs directly from the disk or image file, almost all popular archive formats from your hard drive, and even files inside ZIP and RAR archives. It will even scan all of your media and automatically create a personalized library complete with box covers, descriptions, and fanart. There are playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast feature and many audio visualizations. Once installed, your computer will become a fully functional multimedia jukebox.

Portable Apps

All Your Favorite Apps, Everywhere

PortableApps.com lets you carry all your favorite apps on a portable device or cloud drive and use them on any PC. Now you can have your own browser with all your bookmarks and extensions, your full office suite, your photo editor, your whole music collection, your favorite games, your development tools and more. You can have everything you need for work and play with you on every PC you use. At work, at home, at school, visiting family and friends, even while traveling. And all your bookmarks, emails, personal files and settings stay right on your drive, too. Now, every PC becomes your PC

YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer)

The successor to MultibootISOs. It can be used to create a Multiboot USB Flash Drive containing multiple operating systems, antivirus utilities, disc cloning, diagnostic tools, and more.

Aside from a few distributions, all files are stored within the Multiboot folder, making for a nicely organized Multiboot Drive that can still be used for other storage purposes.Creating a YUMI Multiboot MultiSystem Bootable USB Flash DriveYUMI works much like Universal USB Installer, except it can be used to install more than one distribution to run from your USB. Distributions can also be uninstalled using the same tool!

April 2, 2013NEW MEETING ROOM

Paul Mather

Computer and Windows Tips

Paul will lead the group in a Question and Answer period. He will start off with some basic Windows Tips and the meeting will flow from questions. The questions can be on anything related to computing or other technology.

We would appreciate questions prior to the meeting so we can work on the responses.

With our new room we also have a new time and format.

We will be opening the doors at 6:30. This is your opportunity to chat with other members, ask informal questions or just socialize.

Our formal meeting will start at 7 pm and any speakers will begin soon thereafter, depending on the length of the announcements.

We will end at 9:30 and we ask people to assist in any cleanup required.

Mike Clarke

Photoshop Elements+ Odds and Ends

Slight change of plan here. Rather than spend a whole evening on a photo editing program that some members don't use, I will spend about a half the meeting on Elements, and the rest of the evening going through some of the items I use on my desktop on a regular basis.

This will include Screen manipulation and use of windows 7 in ways that don't require sophisticated applications. I have taken on Evernote, which was introduced to us by Paul - which I now share between my Windows and Linux machines. It doesn't work well with my B10 however - yet.

Programs not covered on my machine will be listed on a flip chart during the meeting and time will be allowed towards the end of the evening to respond to any requests - perhaps to book for a future meeting. MC.

Google +: An Alternative to FacebookThe biggest social network that you don't use...even though chances are you are already a member! Sean will give you an overview of the ins and outs of Google+, whats a +1, and why you should consider using it more then you use Facebook.

It is hard to see that Google plus will surpass Facebook in the foreseeable future. But it is possible that with Google’s web and mobile properties of Google mail, YouTube, Blogger and the Android mobile operating system (plus other online assets) providing a ready user base of over 1.2 billion that it could rival Facebook.

This competing duopoly would provide a competitive environment that would lead to a continually evolving and healthy social media network ecosystem.

Maybe 2015 will see Facebook matched by Google+ as it does look likely it will pass LinkedIn as the second largest social network this year.

Competition is always a positive environment that brings out the best!

With Skype, you can share a story, celebrate a birthday, learn a language, hold a meeting, work with colleagues – just about anything you need to do together every day. You can use Skype on whatever works best for you - on your phone or computer or a TV with Skype on it. It is free to start using Skype - to speak, see and instant message other people on Skype for example. You can even try out group video, with the latest version of Skype.

Since 2009 we have been recording most of our meetings with two purposes in mind, to make meetings available to anyone who could not attend the physical meeting; and to keep a comprehensive record of our meetings for the BCTC (BUG) archives. Certainly there is one more reason, and that is simply because we enjoy the process of setting up each session and creating the final product. A list of past videos will be available at this meeting, as well as written descriptions of each session. Also, an overall presentation will broad-brush the range of meetings that have taken place over the last four or five years. Video editing has been the subject of two recent presentations, so Mike will briefly demonstrate the approach taken at the video, editing and production stages. The next step will be to make videos available online, perhaps in the form of brief tutorials.

Paul Mather

YOUR FAMILY TREE

Ancestry has spent more than a decade building the world’s largest online family history resource - including historical records, photos, stories, family trees and a collaborative community of millions.

Family Tree Maker connects this online resource with your computer, allowing you to pick up records and resources supporting your information.